---
title: "Building a common voice for additive manufacturing"
url: https://www.voxelmatters.com/building-a-common-voice-for-additive-manufacturing/
date: 2025-10-29
modified: 2026-02-03
lang: en
author: "Davide Sher"
description: "The first Global AM Hubs Summit, held September 16–18, 2025, at DFactory Barcelona, set out to do something European additive manufacturing has struggled with for years: connect dozens of national..."
categories:
  - "3D Printing Events"
  - "Decision Makers"
  - "Executive Interviews"
  - "Global AM Hubs Summit"
  - "Sponsored"
tags:
  - "Featured"
image: https://www.voxelmatters.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Global_AM_Hubs_Summit_AW25-day01_0181-copia-640x427.jpg
word_count: 2212
---

# Building a common voice for additive manufacturing

The first [Global AM Hubs Summit,](https://www.voxelmatters.com/event/1st-global-am-hubs-summit-barcelona/) held September 16–18, 2025, at DFactory Barcelona, set out to do something European additive manufacturing has struggled with for years: connect dozens of national and regional organizations in a way that produces practical outcomes, not just photo opportunities. The event—conceived and led by David Adrover Iglesias, Head of DIGIFAB from the Catalan Society of Technology (SCT) and [IAM3DHUB](https://www.voxelmatters.directory/company/iam3dhub/)’s General Secretary—brought together more than 25 hubs and associations from across Europe and beyond, along with technology providers and institutional partners, to begin shaping a shared agenda on industrialization, policy, and skills.

“We discovered so many hubs and associations like ours out there, but reaching them was hard and we were all working in small silos,” David said. “The idea was to create a common framework for cooperation, not just another mailing list.”

The summit also served as a launchpad for Addliance, a European AM hubs alliance designed to channel feedback from regional ecosystems into policy recommendations and coordinated industry action. While the format included company showcases and live demonstrations at IAM3DHUB’s home base inside DFactory, the core of the program focused on structured panels intended to feed concrete workstreams over the next year.

[![](https://www.voxelmatters.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Global_AM_Hubs_Summit_2025_IMG_9276-640x480.jpg)](https://www.voxelmatters.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Global_AM_Hubs_Summit_2025_IMG_9276.jpg)

[![](https://www.voxelmatters.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Global_AM_Hubs_Summit_2025_IMG_9333-640x480.jpg)](https://www.voxelmatters.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Global_AM_Hubs_Summit_2025_IMG_9333.jpg)

[![](https://www.voxelmatters.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Global_AM_Hubs_Summit_2025_IMG_9332-640x480.jpg)](https://www.voxelmatters.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Global_AM_Hubs_Summit_2025_IMG_9332.jpg)

[![](https://www.voxelmatters.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Global_AM_Hubs_Summit_2025_IMG_9325-640x480.jpg)](https://www.voxelmatters.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Global_AM_Hubs_Summit_2025_IMG_9325.jpg)

## From Formnext conversations to a working network

The summit traces its roots to the Formnext Guest Country program. Seeing France and then the Nordics featured at the Frankfurt trade show gave the Barcelona team a clearer view of the organizations operating elsewhere: the [Norwegian AM cluster](https://www.voxelmatters.directory/company/norwegian-am/), the [Finnish ecosystem](https://www.voxelmatters.directory/company/finnish-additive-manufacturing-ecosystem-fame/), the [Danish AM Hub](https://www.voxelmatters.directory/company/dansk-am-hub/), and others. The exposure was valuable, but the interactions were episodic. “It was a pity that we only heard about many of these entities through one-off communication impacts,” Adrover Iglesias said. “We wanted to go beyond introductions.”

The plan began informally. IAM3DHUB shared the concept with its board—then chaired by Ramón Pastor—and reached out through Formnext to the national hubs highlighted by the Guest Country initiative. The response, according to Adrover Iglesias, was enthusiastic enough to test the premise in person at Formnext 2024. A preliminary meeting set expectations: keep it practical, focus on what hubs could do together, and avoid creating an empty umbrella.

![](https://www.voxelmatters.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Global_AM_Hubs_Summit_2025_IMG_9297.jpg)From the left: David Adrover with Eetu Holstein from the Finnish AM Ecosystem, the Norwegian cluster’s Jan Tore Usken, Johannes Gartner, AM Austria President, Stefanie Brickwede from Mobility/Medical Goes Additive (MGA) and Herman van Bolhuis from AM Campus / 3D Makers Zone.

The network started with six or seven organizations in those early conversations and grew through a focused mapping exercise. The group spent months identifying other hubs and associations, from established national bodies to newer clusters that had not yet appeared on the radar. “We found many that we were not aware of,” he said, citing Bulgaria’s emerging association as one example. By the time the Barcelona event opened, the list had expanded to roughly 25 participating entities, and more reached out during and after the summit.

That mix—mature national bodies and younger, fast-moving hubs—was by design. It allowed newer participants to absorb best practices on governance and funding while giving established organizations a platform to mentor and extend their impact. “The younger ones were very enthusiastic to get things started. The more mature entities had broader national reach but needed to justify why to invest time and resources in a new initiative,” Adrover Iglesias said. “The balance mattered.”

## Building the summit in Barcelona

Organizationally, the event began as a lean effort rather than a full-scale conference production. Board changes at IAM3DHUB complicated matters, but the team decided to proceed with the impulse and involvement of the DIGIFAB network under the SCT - Catalan Society of Technology. “It started like a family-and-friends activity rather than a professional thing,” Adrover Iglesias said. He and colleagues coordinated with the Consorci de la Zona Franca de Barcelona, which owns the DFactory building, to secure the venue and align communications. Volunteers from partner hubs helped shape the agenda; the Norwegian cluster’s Jan Tore Usken, manager, Eetu Holstein from Finnish AM Ecosystem, with other Finnish representatives, and Johannes Gartner, AM Austria President, contributed early. [Mobility/Medical Goes Additive (MGA)](https://www.voxelmatters.directory/company/mobility-goes-additive-mga/) and [AM Campus / 3D Makers Zone](https://www.voxelmatters.directory/company/3dmz-3d-makers-zone/) joined the core organizing group as timelines and materials took shape.

Choosing DFactory as the host provided the team with a known, fully equipped environment and kept costs manageable for a first-year experiment. “In terms of operations, it’s automatically ready,” Adrover Iglesias said. The door remains open to moving the summit in future editions, but that depends on organizational bandwidth across the network. “If we organize it in Norway, for example, the cluster may be one or two people. It’s quite difficult to host such an event without a deeper resource base,” he added. For now, Barcelona’s facility and local institutional backing provide a repeatable model while the alliance formalizes.

[![](https://www.voxelmatters.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Global_AM_Hubs_Summit_2025_IMG_9300-640x480.jpg)](https://www.voxelmatters.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Global_AM_Hubs_Summit_2025_IMG_9300.jpg)

[![](https://www.voxelmatters.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Global_AM_Hubs_Summit_2025_IMG_9301-640x480.jpg)](https://www.voxelmatters.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Global_AM_Hubs_Summit_2025_IMG_9301.jpg)

[![](https://www.voxelmatters.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Global_AM_Hubs_Summit_2025_IMG_9307-640x480.jpg)](https://www.voxelmatters.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Global_AM_Hubs_Summit_2025_IMG_9307.jpg)

[![](https://www.voxelmatters.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Global_AM_Hubs_Summit_2025_IMG_9303-640x480.jpg)](https://www.voxelmatters.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Global_AM_Hubs_Summit_2025_IMG_9303.jpg)

The summit’s long-term value will be measured by what it does between events, not just during them. From the outset, IAM3DHUB framed the gathering as a step toward a working “think tank” that converts the industry’s disparate experiences into actionable input for policymakers, technology centers, universities, and industrial adopters.

That is why panels were structured less as headline lectures and more as moderated discussions earmarked for synthesis. “We did not bring people just to share ideas on stage,” Adrover Iglesias said. “We wanted to collect them and work on them during the year.” The next edition is slated to deepen that approach, shifting the program mix from introductory “speed dating” segments—10-minute snapshots hubs used this year to explain themselves—to a vertical, workshop-driven format. Two-day tracks would cluster medical, defense, energy, aerospace, and automotive sessions by half-day blocks, enabling deep dives, smaller debate groups, and working meetings that produce specific outcomes.

That pivot will also reduce time spent on live demonstrations and broad application showrooms. “Eighty percent of the audience already knows AM technologies,” Adrover Iglesias said. “The priority now is to organize debate and extract actionable insights for coordinated action with policymakers and industry.”

![](https://www.voxelmatters.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Global_AM_Hubs_Summit_AW25-day01_1375.jpg)

## Participation in a fragmented industry

The sponsorship model reflected the event’s purpose. Rather than building a classic vendor expo around booth traffic, organizers aimed to assemble a representative cross-section of the AM supply side to contribute to panels and working groups. That brought in companies connected to IAM3DHUB’s existing DFactory ecosystem alongside global players not directly affiliated with the Barcelona hub. “We found a lot of interest from sponsors that are not collaborating under the IAM3DHUB umbrella,” Adrover Iglesias said, citing outreach via partner hubs in Austria, Finland, and elsewhere.

For 2025, major technology companies, including HP, EOS, Stratasys, Bambu Lab and Shining 3D supported the summit, while institutional partners like Formnext and the Consorci de la Zona Franca helped ensure alignment across industry, policy, and research. Looking ahead, the sponsorship offering will emphasize participation rights in vertical panels and year-round workgroups, rather than square meters of exhibit space. Higher tiers could include multiple seats across tracks; smaller packages might focus on a single sector aligned with the sponsor’s priorities. The goal is to align financial support with the work of building common positions on industrial needs, regulatory frameworks, and procurement standards.

Europe’s AM landscape is complicated. Alongside long-standing national hubs, new associations have formed around regions and verticals. That dynamism can spill into rivalry when visions for coordination differ. During the preliminary phase, IAM3DHUB invited a wide range of groups—including those connected to IAM Europe—to collaborate. According to Adrover Iglesias, that outreach produced uneven results. He said some organizations preferred alternative umbrellas and, in isolated cases, discouraged others' participation.

![Behind the scenes of the Global AM Hubs Summit with David Adrover: a new agenda for Europe](https://www.voxelmatters.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Global_AM_Hubs_Summit_2025_IMG_9289-rotated.jpg)Always good to catch up with Bambu Lab's Pawel Slusarczyk.

Adrover Iglesias framed those episodes as growing pains and emphasized that the alliance remains open. “We are always inviting them to participate and to collaborate,” he said. Intermediaries are working to find common ground before Formnext 2025 in Frankfurt, where the hubs will reconvene. The objective, he added, is not to centralize control but to coordinate where it matters: policy messaging, industrial priorities, and shared skills pipelines.

## Why institutions matter

A recurring theme in Barcelona was the need to tighten links between European institutions and the AM industry. Compared with the United States and China, where national strategies and funding frameworks more explicitly recognize AM as strategic infrastructure, Europe’s dialogues often remain fragmented at the member-state level. “It’s incredible how little interaction there is between institutions and industry in Europe,” said VoxelMatters’ Davide Sher during the interview. Adrover Iglesias agreed, pointing to Germany’s national additive strategy as a benchmark and arguing for coordinated national efforts that align with an EU-level view.

That is where Addliance intends to operate. By aggregating input across hubs, the alliance can serve as a reference point for ministries and agencies—from research funding to defense procurement—as they design programs. There is also a domestic angle. IAM3DHUB has historically received support from Catalonia’s regional administration and is using the alliance’s output to continue educating funders about the importance of maintaining a center focused on accelerating industrial adoption. “Having a unified voice and a stronger cooperation framework helps us push together, both to the European Union and at national and regional levels,” Adrover Iglesias said.

![](https://www.voxelmatters.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Global_AM_Hubs_Summit_AW25-day01_0201.jpg)

Formnext’s Spain Guest Country initiative this year gives those efforts more visibility. IAM3DHUB first approached Formnext organizers about Spain’s candidacy two years ago, when the summit concept was still forming. The resulting collaboration spans media, on-site programming in Frankfurt, and cross-promotion of the Barcelona summit’s outcomes. In Frankfurt, the hubs plan a debrief panel with representatives from Norway, Finland, Austria, MGA, and IAM3DHUB & SCT to share takeaways and next steps. IAM3DHUB will maintain its own booth focused on technology providers while also supporting the broader Spanish ecosystem presence through the GO! 3D initiative and the country pavilion coordinated with national partners.

## At the table today and tomorrow

The Barcelona roster reflected the summit’s dual identity as both a European alliance and a global network. European hubs included DIGIFAB-SCT (Spain), IAM3DHUB-Leitat (Spain), Danish AM Hub (Denmark), France Additive (France), AM Austria (Austria), the Finnish AM Ecosystem (FAME), AM4Life (Sweden), the Norwegian AM Cluster, Mobility|Medical Goes Additive, Turkey’s AM Association (TAMA), among many others. Groups with global or non-EU mandates, such as AMGTA, Swiss MAM, AM Energy and Women in 3D Printing, added breadth. Technology companies brought applications and software perspectives; institutional partners supported the policy and research bridge.

Programmatically, four pillars anchored the agenda and will carry into the work plan: scaling from prototyping to industrial production; digital transformation with AI and data-driven workflows; sustainability and circularity; and application verticals in medical, defense, and energy. The opening day highlighted ecosystem showcases and policy discussions. Day two moved into sectors with materials companies and systems makers weighing in alongside hospitals, defense stakeholders, and energy specialists. The final day was reserved for ecosystem visits in Barcelona and private alliance meetings to translate public discussions into a work calendar.

![](https://www.voxelmatters.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Global_AM_Hubs_Summit_Go_IMG_4241.jpeg)

Next year’s structure is likely to reallocate time to working sessions. Adrover Iglesias described a two-day schedule divided into sector blocks, each combining a moderated panel with smaller, facilitated breakouts tasked with drafting position notes, prioritizing actions, and identifying where hubs can jointly approach ministries, standards bodies, or funding programs. New hubs joining the alliance would still have time for brief introductions. Still, the majority of the agenda will be devoted to producing materials to guide public and private decision-making over the following 12 months.

For IAM3DHUB and its partners, the summit will be judged less by attendance counts and more by the durability of the network it catalyzes. One measure is participation from sponsors and hubs in between the headline events. Another is whether ministries, development agencies, and standards organizations begin to solicit structured input from Addliance when shaping calls for proposals, industrial roadmaps, or regulatory guidance. A third is whether the alliance can help member hubs build capacity—governance templates, membership models, funding strategies—so the organizational burden of hosting or leading workstreams does not remain with a handful of teams.

[![](https://www.voxelmatters.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Global_AM_Hubs_Summit_Go_IMG_4253-640x480.jpeg)](https://www.voxelmatters.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Global_AM_Hubs_Summit_Go_IMG_4253.jpeg)

[![](https://www.voxelmatters.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Global_AM_Hubs_Summit_Go_IMG_4267-640x480.jpeg)](https://www.voxelmatters.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Global_AM_Hubs_Summit_Go_IMG_4267.jpeg)

[![](https://www.voxelmatters.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Global_AM_Hubs_Summit_Go_IMG_4262-640x401.jpeg)](https://www.voxelmatters.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Global_AM_Hubs_Summit_Go_IMG_4262.jpeg)

[![](https://www.voxelmatters.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Global_AM_Hubs_Summit_Go_IMG_4294-640x413.jpeg)](https://www.voxelmatters.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Global_AM_Hubs_Summit_Go_IMG_4294.jpeg)

David expects Barcelona to remain a strong candidate for hosting again, at least until more hubs have the resources to take on full production. He is also clear that the content will continue to shift toward alignment with policy and industry. “The main thing will be the panel discussions and the workshops,” he said. “It’s about putting people to work together and extracting actionable insights.”

He is equally frank about the value proposition for technology providers. Most of the companies that supported the first edition want less stage time for product messaging and more structured opportunities to influence the alliance’s positions on procurement, certification, and the skills pipeline. The sponsorship packages for next year will reflect that, with seats in vertical tracks and year-round workgroups designed to make contributions—and expectations—explicit.

For an industry that often celebrates breakthroughs in isolation, the Global AM Hubs Summit attempts a different path: build the connective tissue before the next wave of growth, and do it in a way that policy and industry can act on. Barcelona provided a first test. The next twelve months will reveal how much of that intent can translate into shared priorities, joint advocacy, and measurable progress on the hard parts of industrial adoption.